Path: news.eternal-september.org!eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: "Ian J. Ball" <ijball@mac.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.tv
Subject: Re: What Did You Watch? 2025-05-31 (Saturday)
Date: Sun, 1 Jun 2025 16:17:24 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 115
Message-ID: <101in24$2i5e2$1@dont-email.me>
References: <101i5e2$2c51s$1@dont-email.me> <101igft$2fc2u$1@dont-email.me>
 <101immp$2ju8n$2@dont-email.me>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=UTF-8; format=flowed
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Injection-Date: Mon, 02 Jun 2025 01:17:28 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="d142c2b2e57b7052c392a9735d6193f3";
	logging-data="2692546"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1+W62AW/KgleR7JgTy13WiJ"
User-Agent: Mozilla Thunderbird
Cancel-Lock: sha1:4dPSrchFRU5Qt5MGSwpisdFL/+E=
In-Reply-To: <101immp$2ju8n$2@dont-email.me>
Content-Language: en-US

On 6/1/25 4:11 PM, BTR1701 wrote:

> On Jun 1, 2025 at 2:25:17 PM PDT, ""Ian J. Ball"" <ijball@mac.invalid> wrote:
>> On 6/1/25 11:16 AM, Dimensional Traveler wrote:
>>
>>>   What Did You Watch?
>>
>> I treated yesterday as my first "vacation day", and it was glorious! I
>> did nothing!  :D
>>
>> But I did get through the end of "Andor" and rolled that right into a
>> rewatch of "Rogue One" (or is it "Rouge One"?!!  ;p  )...:
>>
>> Andor (Disney+) - The final 3 episodes - ep's #2.10-2.12.
>>      The final three episodes are top notch, though the "One Year Later
>> (BBY 1)" teaser at the start of #2.10 is patently untrue this time, as
>> these episodes basically take place mere days before "Rogue One" (or is
>> it "Rouge One"?!!  ;p  ), which itself take place just days before the
>> original "Star Wars" movie's ending. (So, more like "BBY Day T-7" or
>> something!)
>>      These episodes do have some fun bringing back tons of people from
>> the "Rogue One" film... with one major exception - I didn't even realize
>> until I watched "Rogue One" again that Bail Organa had always been
>> played by Jimmy Smits, and not Benjamin Bratt as he was in season #2 of
>> "Rogue One"! (I really wonder why Smits couldn't make it back - they
>> claim "scheduling conflicts", but I'm not buying that and wonder if
>> Smits has health issues... or if they didn't want him back?!) FTR, I
>> actually *prefer* Bratt's take on Bail.
>>      Anyway, in the final episodes, Lonni Jung finally hits pay dirt in
>> Dedra Meero's files (which he's been snooping on!) and finds out that
>> everything that has happened previously is all tied together in the
>> Imperials' plan for a "super weapon"! (though Jung doesn't know the name
>> of this weapon). Jung wants out, but in his one final dastardly act,
>> Luthen Rael does NOT send Jung home to his family.  >:/
>>      But doing all this likely means Jung is blown, which means Luthen is
>> also almost certainly blown to the Imperials as well. Sure enough, Dedra
>> Meero soon shows up. Will Luthen get out of this alive? Will Kleya
>> (Elizabeth Dulau)?! Will they be able to contact Cassian Andor in time
>> to come rescue them?!
>>      After episode #2.10, I was very worried that we would be robbed of
>> Kleya's escape from Coruscant (with them just skipping to her on Yavin),
>> but episode #2.11 pretty much was 100% about Kleya trying to escape
>> Coruscant. Also, there's finally backstory of how Luthen came to be
>> Luthen and how Kleya came to be his "daughter" (of sorts) in episode
>> #2.10 as well.
>>      The final episode is pretty much 100% set up for "Rogue One", which
>> is actually unsatisfying, as we know there will be no follow up on the
>> stories of Kleya, Vel Sartha (Faye Marsay) or Bix (Adria Arjona). In
>> fact, I'm finding this incredibly frustrating, as this series may end
>> with (effectively) Cassian's "end", but there are a bunch of others here
>> who survive "Rogue One" whom we will get no follow up on.
>>      (P.S. Whatever happened to Mon Mothma's dopey daughter, esp. after
>> Mon fled the Empire as a traitor?! We get a final scene with her
>> husband, and the lovely Rosalind Halstead as the mother of her
>> daughter's husband, implying that he wasn't arrested, but I am
>> skeptical, and we get no mention of the daughter after the wedding.)
>>      As for the Imperials, it goes badly for all of them, especially
>> Dedra Meero who finally gets her just desserts for being an Imperial spy
>> fangirl.
>>      But, as far as Cassian goes, this sets up a pretty heroic ending for
>> him (even if "Rogue One" doesn't 100% deliver on this), and gets all the
>> other pieces that we see in the "Rogue One" film in place.
>>
>> I then followed this up immediately with:
>>
>> Rogue One (or is it "Rouge One"?!!  ;p  ) (Disney+) - In glorious 4k!
>> though this movie looks so good that even in non UHDTV, it still usually
>> looks great.
>>      I mainly watched this to see, 1) how well it lines up with the
>> "Andor" TV series, and 2) how well it matches up in terms of how people
>> look between the film and the TV series (where season #2 was filmed
>> about 8 years later!).
>>      On the former, I'm going to say... not well. At the end of "Andor",
>> Cassian is in possession of a lot more information that he seems to know
>> in "Rogue One" - like, he already knows the Empire has a "super weapon"
>> (even if he doesn't know its name), and he already knows about Galen
>> Erso, but *none* of that comes across in "Rogue One" which clearly
>> portrays Cassian as not know about the details of any of this stuff. Nor
>> does Cassian *ever* mention anything about a "girl he lost" in this film!
>>      I don't know what you call this phenomenon, but it's basically the
>> *exact opposite* of a "retcon [retro-continuity]"!!
>>      However, I did appreciate Andor's executing the informant in this
>> film being foreshadowed by what Luthen does to Lonni Jung. That was a
>> nice touch from the TV series.
>>      On the second point, they do a lot better: Diego Luna and Genevieve
>> O'Reilly look the same or imperceptibly different between the film and
>> the TV series. And while Alistair Petrie (as General Draven) looks a
>> little bit older in the series, it's not so as you'd really notice...
>>      However, this is definitely *not* true of Ben Mendelsohn as Krennic
>> - he looks *way young* in "Rogue One" which means he looks *way older*
>> in "Andor"!
>>      I'm going to say that Duncan Pow (as Sgt. Melshi) - and I didn't
>> realize he was in both seasons #1 & #2 of "Andor" as well as this film!
>> - also looks noticeably younger in "Rogue One" which means he looks
>> noticeably older in "Andor".
>>      And, of course, Jimmy Smits as Bail Organa here, while Bratt plays
>> him in Andor.
> 
> So Felicity Jones couldn't make it back as Jyn Erso? I haven't finished the
> show yet, but I've heard about the ROGUE ONE cameos and was hoping to see Jyn
> again. She's always been one of my favorite female action lead characters,
> like Ripley and Sarah Connor. She's smart and capable without having to resort
> to the usual nonsense of watching her beat up men three times her size.

Unfortunately, there would be no in-universe justification for Jyn to 
show up in "Andor" - she and Cassian had clearly never met before "Rogue 
One", and in fact at the film's open she's in jail (presumably for some 
time?).

Now, they could try to do a "Jyn Erso"-featured background TV series a 
la "Andor", but 1) Jones is probably to old now and gets "more too old" 
with every year that passes, and 2) I'm guessing Jones wouldn't want to 
be tied down by a Disney+ series like that.